How Adolf Hitler Tackled Financial and Economic Crisis Within Three Years

Two days after taking office as Chancellor, Hitler addressed the nation by radio. Although he and other leaders of his movement had made clear their intention to reorganize the nation’s social, political, cultural and educational life in accord with National Socialist principles, everyone knew that, with some six million jobless and the national economy in paralysis, the great priority of the moment was to restore the nation’s economic life, above all by tackling unemployment and providing productive work.

After taking power, writes Prof. John Garraty, a prominent American historian, Hitler and his new government “immediately launched an all-out assault on unemployment … They stimulated private industry through subsidies and tax rebates, encouraged consumer spending by such means as marriage loans, and plunged into the massive public-works program that produced the autobahn [highway system], and housing, railroad and navigation projects.”

As he had promised, Hitler and his National Socialist government banished unemployment within four years. The number of jobless was cut from six million at the beginning of 1933, when he took power, to one million by 1936. / 7 So rapidly was the jobless rate reduced that by 1937-38 there was a national labor shortage.

For the great mass of Germans, wages and working conditions improved steadily. From 1932 to 1938 gross real weekly earnings increased by 21 percent. After taking into account tax and insurance deductions and adjustments to the cost of living, the increase in real weekly earnings during this period was 14 percent. At the same time, rents remained stable, and there was a relative decline in the costs of heating and light. Prices actually declined for some consumer goods, such as electrical appliances, clocks and watches, as well as for some foods.

The “normal” work day for most Germans was eight hours, and pay for overtime work was generous. / 10 In addition to higher wages, benefits included markedly improved working conditions, such as better health and safety conditions, canteens with subsidized hot meals, athletic fields, parks, subsidized theater performances and concerts, exhibitions, sports and hiking groups, dances, adult education courses, and subsidized tourism. / 11 An already extensive network of social welfare programs, including old age insurance and a national health care program, was expanded.

Hitler wanted Germans to have “the highest possible standard of living,” he said in an interview with an American journalist in early 1934.

Germany’s crime rate fell during the Hitler years, with significant drops in the rates of murder, robbery, theft, embezzlement and petty larceny.